Shorebirds have a preference for shorelines and wet habitats along ocean coasts and rivers. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from the 6" long Least Sandpiper up to the 18" long American Oystercatcher. They dine on crustaceans, mollusks, and insects in the shoreline mudflats, using their long bills to probe in a variety of hunting techniques. There are over 180 species of birds around the world that can be classified as shorebirds.
This is a presentation of some of my shorebird photographs taken along shorelines and wet habitats ranging from Canada through New England and south to Florida and Texas. These images represent only a tiny fraction of shorebird species to be found worldwide. For further study and identification, refer to a good bird field guide such as The Sibley Guide to Birds, 2nd edition.
The following categories are included:
- Dowitchers
- Willets
- Sandpipers
- Knots and Turnstones
- Whimbrels, Curlews, and Godwits
- Stilts and Avocets
- Plovers
- Oystercatchers
- Yellowlegs
- Mixed Peeps
DOWITCHERS
This shorebird has a distinctive profile and is best known for its sewing-machine-like technique of probing in the mudflats. It is difficult to distinguish long-billed from short-billed dowitchers on the basis of field marks alone but they have different calls. Long-billed dowitchers are found more commonly in the American West.
WILLETS
This large shorebird has a mottled brown plumage during breeding season, and is gray during non-breeding season. In flight it shows distinctive black wingbars. These are common coastline shorebirds.
SANDPIPERS
The sandpipers are a very large family with many species ranging in size from the 6" Least Sandpiper to the 18" Marbled Godwit. Dowitchers, curlews, snipe and turnstones are also in this family, although I have put them in their own separate sections. This section includes least sandpipers, dunlin, semipalmated sandpipers, solitary sandpipers, baird's sandpipers, white-rumped sandpipers, pectoral sandpipers, sanderlings and stilt sandpipers.
Semipalmated sandpipers migrate southbound by the hundreds of thousands each year stopping in mid-August to fatten up on the mudworms found in the mudflats in the Upper Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick. It is one of the great shorebird spectacles in nature. I visited here at Johnson's Mills in August 2015 along with my friend and bird photographer Karl Gerstenberger.
KNOTS AND TURNSTONES
Another of the great shorebird migration spectacles in nature is the arrival in mid-May of the horseshoe crabs along the Delaware Bay near Cape May, New Jersey. This attracts Red Knots and Ruddy Turnstones by the hundreds of thousands, who time their arrival to feast on the horseshoe crab eggs, along with Dunlins, Least Sandpipers, and Laughing Gulls.
WHIMBRELS, CURLEWS & GODWITS
Although whimbrels, curlews and godwits are all in the sandpiper family, they are large distinctive birds and I have included them in their own separate section. Whimbrels have a long decurved bill used for extracting food from shoreline mudflats, and Long-billed Curlews have an even longer decurved bill. Both Marbled and Hudsonian Godwits regularly visit the east coast mudflats. I have included the beautiful Marbled Godwit in this section.
STILTS AND AVOCETS
Black-necked Stilts and American Avocets are distinctive for their long-legged dainty appearance. The Black-necked Stilt has bright pink legs, and the American Avocet has an upward-curved bill.
PLOVERS
These stocky shorebirds have shorter thicker bills and are in a large family that includes the American Golden Plover, Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, the endangered Piping Plover, Snowy Plover, and Wilson's Plover. Also included is the Killdeer, a mostly-inland plover found in fields and sometimes golf courses. The American Golden Plover is a champion long-distance migratory shorebird, nesting in the Arctic tundra and then flying to southernmost South America.
OYSTERCATCHERS
The American Oystercatcher is one of the largest shorebirds, with a length up to 18". It has a long stout orange bill which is used for opening bivalves including oysters and clams, but also for digging up sand crabs.
YELLOWLEGS
Yellowlegs are medium- to large-sized sandpipers with distinctive yellow legs. The Lesser Yellowlegs is not only smaller than Greater Yellowlegs, it also has a shorter bill length. The Greater Yellowlegs' bill is slightly upturned. There are also subtle differences in plumage, as shown in these photographs.
MIXED PEEPS
A large group of shorebirds will often include mixed species such as semipalmated sandpipers and semipalmated plovers. Birders call these aggregations "peeps." Here are a few photographs of peeps in flight and roosting on the shoreline.